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Another U.N. shelter shelled in Gaza. Another 16 refugees die.

By Alexandra ZavisLos Angeles Times

Posted:
07/30/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
07/30/2014 11:32:10 PM CDT

JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip -- Most residents were asleep when the strikes started Wednesday at a United Nations school sheltering 3,300 Palestinians displaced by the war between Israel and the militant group Hamas.

Two shells slammed into classrooms packed with women and children, survivors said. Another hit a bathroom where men were performing their ablutions before dawn prayers. At least 16 people were killed and 90 injured, hospital officials said.

It was one of numerous deadly strikes Wednesday as Israel carried out some of the most intense bombardments of its 23-day-old offensive in the Gaza Strip.

More than 130 people were killed in Israeli shelling throughout the narrow coastal enclave, raising the Palestinian death toll in the campaign to more than 1,340, said Ashraf Kidra, a Gaza health official.

The Israeli military also said three of its soldiers were killed while uncovering a tunnel in a home in southern Gaza. The house and tunnel were booby-trapped with explosives that detonated during the operation, it said.

At least 56 soldiers have been killed on the Israeli side, along with three civilians who died in mortar shelling and rocket fire from Gaza.

Israel says its Gaza operation is meant to stop Hamas rocket and mortar fire that has reached increasingly deeper into its territory and to destroy a sophisticated network of tunnels used for attacks inside Israel.

But Hamas has refused efforts to forge a truce, insisting its demands including the lifting of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade must be met first.

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Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said no U.N. facility had been targeted Wednesday. A military spokeswoman said Palestinian militants had "opened fire at Israeli soldiers from the vicinity" of the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp Wednesday morning, and that Israeli troops had "responded by firing toward the origins of the fire."

But in his strongest comments to date on attacks on U.N. installations in Gaza, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in San Jose, Costa Rica, that "nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children," according to a transcript provided by his office.

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council said the United States condemned the shelling of the school and "those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza."

"All of these actions, and similar ones earlier in the conflict, are inconsistent with the U.N.'s neutrality," the statement added.

The United Nations has strenuously argued that no rockets were hidden in schools that were being used as shelters, adding that it was their officials who had found rockets in schools they had abandoned because of fighting nearby -- and publicly condemned those who used the installations to store weapons.

The Israeli military earlier denied responsibility for 16 deaths last week at another U.N. school serving as a shelter, in Beit Hanoun, saying that the only piece of Israeli ordnance to hit the school compound, an errant mortar, struck when the courtyard was empty.

The Israeli military said it targeted about 110 sites in Gaza on Wednesday, including at least five mosques it said were used by militants to conceal weapons, house tunnel shafts and serve as lookout posts.

With violence spiraling in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces announced a four-hour cessation of hostilities beginning at 3 p.m. Wednesday to give rescue workers time to remove the dead and evacuate the injured, and to give civilians trapped in combat zones time to escape. But they said the "humanitarian window" would not apply to areas where troops were "active."

Hamas spokesman Sami abu Zuhri dismissed the announcement as "a media stunt," saying the truce had no value because it excluded zones along the border with Israel, where wounded awaited evacuation.

In the hours after the unilateral truce took effect, 26 rockets were launched from Gaza toward Israel, two of which were intercepted by the country's missile defense system over the cities of Ashkelon and Netivot, the Israeli military said.

In Gaza City, explosions thundered into the evening. Before Israel's cease-fire ended, word came of shelling in a crowded shopping area on the east side of the city.

Gaza health officials said at least 17 people had been killed and more than 200 injured in the strike on the edge of Shajaiya, which has been one of the most heavily bombarded neighborhoods in Gaza.

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz said the military was investigating the incidents at the market and school. He told Israel's Channel 2 television that the country had warned international organizations that Hamas had been firing at Israeli forces from such locations and that "the IDF will not endanger its troops" by not responding.

He and other Israeli officials accuse Palestinian militants of putting civilians at risk by operating among them.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl, commissioner-general of the United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said evidence collected at the school site indicated that it had been hit by Israeli artillery. Among the dead was a U.N. guard who was trying to protect the site.

"This is an affront to all of us," Kraehenbuehl said in a statement. "The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army 17 times."

Israel said it had dropped leaflets and sent recorded phone messages to residents Tuesday, urging them to evacuate. But many of those sheltering at the school said they did not receive the warnings, and in any case had nowhere to go.

This report includes information from the Associated Press and the New York Times.